


all great and precious things

by draculard



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, Angst, Blood and Injury, Developing Relationship, Embarrassment, F/M, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Military Homophobia, Military Transphobia, Minor Injuries, Planet Batuu (Star Wars), Trans Male Character, Trans Thrawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:29:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26741392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Thrawn has a secret.Faro is remarkably bad at putting the evidence together.
Relationships: Karyn Faro/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Past Ar'alani/Thrawn, Vah'nya/Eli Vanto
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	all great and precious things

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the John Steinbeck quote: "All great and precious things are lonely."

Rukh buzzed her in, scowling up at Faro from his post even as she walked inside. She could hear muffled impact sounds coming from the training room adjacent to Thrawn’s aft bridge office and went straight to the door, studying her datapad as she knocked.

“Sir?” she called.

The impact noises continued for a moment before she heard his deactivation code, spoken calmly, if a little breathlessly, in the middle of the fight. Faro waited patiently until the door slid open and Thrawn stepped out, looking down at her. 

“Sir,” she said, presenting the datapad and very studiously not gawking at his biceps. “The reports from Captain Wux.”

His eyebrows quirked and he took the datapad at once. “Ah,” he said, brushing past Faro. She followed behind him, her eyes tracking from his tousled hair to his sweat-soaked undershirt — the way the cloth stuck to his abs and creased where it met his hips. She averted her eyes the moment she realized what she was doing, and by the time Thrawn reached his desk and leaned against it, she hoped she had her blush under control.

He scanned the datapad silently, his face impossible to read. When he finished, he glanced up at her, then back down at his workout clothes with a sigh. He handed her the datapad without a word and grabbed the white tunic draped over his chair.

“Accompany me to the bridge, Commodore,” he said, shrugging the tunic on.

Faro’s eyebrows twitched. She watched as the sweat-soaked undershirt disappeared, button-by-button, beneath the pristine white material of Thrawn’s uniform. “Sir,” she said, “don’t you…?”

Thrawn looked at her expectantly.

“Don’t you want to change first?” Faro asked, gesturing toward his chest.

“This is fine,” said Thrawn.

“Sir, you’re…” Flummoxed, Faro could only shake her head. “You _just_ finished working out. You could at least change your undershirt before we go.”

“No need,” said Thrawn.

Faro hated to break it to him, but there was a need. “Sweat … smells bad to humans,” she said delicately. Thrawn gazed back at her, his face expressionless for so long that she became convinced he was going to argue with her like a teenage boy. Instead, he eventually inclined his head and undid the buttons on his tunic.

“What did you think of the report?” he asked, his voice strangely tight.

“Ah…” Faro took a moment to recalibrate. She followed Thrawn back to the training room. “It seems like a good opportunity to catch the smugglers off guard, sir. But it may be a bit too convenient, if you get my drift.”

Thrawn didn’t answer. He opened a small locker door in the training room and stared at its contents with narrow eyes. Then, still nonverbal, he turned his back on Faro in what seemed like a deliberate gesture and peeled the sweat-soaked undershirt over his head. Faro watched, her mouth set in a frown, as Thrawn pulled a fresh one on. Only then did he turn around again. 

“I think your assessment is correct,” he said, grabbing his tunic again on the way out. “Is this sufficient, Commodore?”

It took her a moment to realize he was asking her if he should shower. “It’s fine, sir,” she said. “It’s just … do you always wear used PT clothes on the bridge?”

His face twitched. “No,” he said, voice neutral. “Only today.”

Now Faro was more baffled than before. She studied his face, but he was giving absolutely nothing away.

“Why today, sir?” she asked.

He buttoned his tunic up briskly and raised an eyebrow at her. “Perhaps because I had a colleague in the room, watching me change?” he suggested.

Faro opened her mouth, but closed it without saying a word. She processed the rebuke, a little taken aback by it — she’d never met a single soldier before who hesitated to change in front of a colleague when necessary, and as such it hadn’t even occurred to her to leave the room. Especially since Thrawn was only changing his shirt. But he was an alien, she reminded herself, and perhaps customs were different in the military he’d served before joining the Empire. 

At least Thrawn didn’t seem like he was waiting for an apology. As soon as he’d straightened the collar on his tunic, he tilted his head toward the door.

“Shall we?” he asked.

“Of course, sir,” Faro said. He stared at her for a moment, his face unreadable.

Finally, with a somber nod, he turned and walked away.

* * *

She asked Vanto when she got the chance and found out that, during their entire time at Royal Imperial, he’d somehow never seen Thrawn change his clothes.

“We didn’t have to take any of the physical training courses,” he explained over lunch. “So we were never really in a locker room situation.”

“But you never saw him change when you were both in your room?” Faro asked, eyebrows furrowed. She was hyper-conscious of how potentially weird these questions made her look.

“No,” said Vanto with a shrug. “He always went into the fresher to change. He just took his clothes with him and…”

He made a vague gesture, apparently disinterested in the subject. Faro thought it over carefully, organizing the evidence — baffling and nebulous as it was — in her head.

“What did he sleep in?” she asked.

Vanto’s lips quirked. “Why do you ask?”

Faro fought back a blush, caused mostly by his insinuating tone, and nailed him with her fiercest glare. “Just answer the question,” she said. “Don’t make me pull rank on you.”

“Alright, alright,” he said, waving his hand again. “He always went to sleep after I did. I only ever saw him in his sleeping clothes once, and it was cold that night, so he was wearing one of those black knit sweaters they give you at your first command. And sleep pants, of course.”

“Of course,” Faro repeated. She knew the sweaters Vanto was talking about; every new Imperial recruit got one as part of their standard kit, but most never used them. They were meant for extremely cold-weather commands, where officers would sometimes be forced to stand watch in hazardous conditions. Then, and only then, was it considered permissible to wear a bulky knit sweater underneath one’s tunic.

“Thank you, Vanto,” she said aloud, automatically, as she added this to her list of evidence. She still wasn’t sure what her theory was; she just knew that something about Thrawn’s behavior had stuck in her head ferociously, and now she couldn’t get it out. 

But now that she’d talked to Vanto about it — and received no answers — there was really nothing else she could do except move on.

* * *

It was just like a man, Faro thought sourly, to fall asleep on the short shuttle ride down to Lothal. But in Thrawn’s defense, she _had_ noticed an aura of exhaustion hanging over him ever since Batonn. Her own shifts were always changing, so she’d called on him at all hours of the day during the last few weeks, and every time, he’d answered the door in uniform and perfectly awake. If he kept a regular sleep schedule, she certainly couldn’t discern it, and the bags under his eyes had been particularly red lately. 

Now, he was slumped against the viewport in his white uniform, his head resting against the transparisteel and his face relaxed. Faro studied him a moment longer, mixed feelings of exasperation and affection churning inside her. It was odd to see him without any tension in his face — with his lips slightly parted and his hair in disarray, and a look of exhaustion plaguing him even as he slept. 

She really needed to have a talk with him about overwork, she decided. She was still studying him absently when she heard the chime of a comlink and reflexively lifted her wrist, only to realize it wasn’t hers that was beeping. She craned her neck to look at Thrawn’s wrists — no comlink there — and then at his tunic pocket, which had only code cylinders.

The comlink kept chiming. Cursing under her breath, Faro leaned down as far as she could in her harness and reached for Thrawn’s travel bag. She pulled it into her lap and rifled through it, shoving aside datacards and folded pieces of flimsi until she found the comlink buried at the bottom.

She lifted it up so she could see and huffed out an unamused laugh when she saw Governor Pryce’s name, asking for yet another ETA. Faro didn’t bother to respond. She clicked the mute button on the comlink and tucked it back into Thrawn’s bag.

And then she froze, frowning down at a bottle of supplements that was rolling loose at the bottom of the bag. The shuttle jolted from turbulence and the bottle shifted, exposing the label to Faro’s eyes: testosterone.

She stared at it, her cheeks burning with second-hand embarrassment as she realized what she was staring at. A moment later, things got infinitely worse. She lifted the bottle of supplements, turning it to read the label better out of reflexive curiosity for Thrawn’s diagnosis, and just as she did so, a cold blue hand closed over her wrist.

“Drop it,” said Thrawn, his tone sharp but his voice still a little thick from sleep.

Faro dropped it at once, shoving the bag onto his lap. Thrawn straightened up slowly, stretching out the crick in his neck as he secured the bottle and closed the bag back up. There was a look of sleepy irritation on his face that just made Faro’s blush worse.

“Your comlink was chiming, sir,” she explained, not meeting his eyes. “Governor Pryce wanted an ETA.”

He didn’t respond. Faro sneaked glances at him, trying to read his face; beyond the irritation, which was easily explained, there was a trace of something that she suspected might be repressed embarrassment.

Not that there was anything for _him_ to be embarrassed about, Faro thought. He wasn’t the one who’d been caught snooping — and there was nothing unusual about a man his age taking testosterone, especially in a competitive field like the military. Maybe he had an illness or condition, maybe not, but it wasn’t her business and it wasn’t particularly remarkable, either way.

She sneaked another quick glance at him and saw him staring blankly out the viewport, a dusting of color turning his cheeks a darker shade of blue. 

Oh, fantastic. So he _was_ embarrassed. He was actually _blushing_ , and Faro was the source of it. She averted her eyes, feeling like the world’s biggest asshole and unsure if there was anything she could say or do to make things right.

She cleared her throat, not quite looking at him.

“I apologize for looking through your things, sir,” she said. 

“I don’t require an apology,” said Thrawn coldly, not quite looking at her, either. “I require confirmation that you will not do it again.”

Faro felt like a hole might open up in the bottom of the shuttle and swallow her whole. “I won’t, sir,” she said, chagrined. “And I … I won’t mention the supplements to anyone, of course.”

“Why should you?” asked Thrawn, his face hard.

Right. Faro swallowed her words, now certain that there was nothing she could say to fix things. She’d just have to wait it out and hope that Thrawn’s temper faded in time. And whereas with other officers she might be able to speed that process along by acting extra subservient, she knew that would never work with Thrawn; if anything, it would lower his opinion of her even further. The only way she could thaw Thrawn’s temper was, frankly, to be as competent and capable as she always was. To be herself, essentially.

Which was comforting, in a way, but mostly just made Faro grimace when she thought of how much time it would take. 

With a sigh, she took out her comlink and sent Pryce an updated ETA.

* * *

Thrawn returned to the ship walking stiffly after the victory at Atollon. His jaw was tight, his expression unreadable as he led Faro to his quarters for a debrief. She’d handled the starfield while Thrawn was busy planet-side, and she hadn’t been able to keep up with his every little action as she fought to keep the Rebel fleet from escaping. All she knew was that he hadn’t captured the Rebels as he’d hoped.

She stayed quiet on their walk, mindful of what might have been a bad mood. Only when they reached his quarters did she realize that the tension in Thrawn’s shoulders came from pain, not from anger.

“Are you injured, sir?” she asked, raising her eyebrows as they stepped inside.

He removed his body armor with a grimace. “Only mildly,” he said, voice clipped. “Bruises and minor cuts.”

He pulled his tunic off then, and Faro couldn’t help but wince at the network of old scars and new wounds over his arms. He sat on the edge of his desk to remove his boots, each movement stiff and slow; by the third time he winced, Faro couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Do you have a medkit in your fresher?” she asked him. 

Thrawn glanced up from his boots, a flash of surprise making his eyes widen. “Yes,” he said. 

Faro went for it without another word. She opened the cupboard beneath Thrawn’s sink and found it neatly organized, with the medkit clearly labeled and placed at the front of the shelf. Remembering the incident with the supplements on the shuttle not that long ago, she very deliberately refused to look at the other items on the shelves. She just grabbed the medkit and left. 

When she came back, Thrawn’s back was turned to her and he was in the middle of pulling a faded Royal Imperial crewneck over his head. He’d tossed his undershirt away, giving Faro a rare glimpse of his uncovered back — scars, cuts, bruises, rippling muscles and all.

“Ah-ah-ah,” said Faro sharply, quickening her pace a little. Thrawn had just straightened the hem of the shirt over his abs when she reached him and tugged lightly at his sleeve. “Take this off. I’m going to see to your bruises while you debrief.”

A shadow crossed Thrawn’s face.

“No need,” he said. “They will heal in time.”

“They’ll heal _faster_ with bacta,” said Faro firmly. “And it’s not like we have a shortage, sir, so you might as well use what you have. Shirt off.”

Thrawn turned to face her, giving her a good look at the way the old athletic shirt stretched across the muscles of his chest — and the way the fabric hung from his broad shoulders. Swallowing harshly, Faro used the medkit to gesture toward the bed.

Thrawn gave no sign that he intended to move.

“You’ll feel better in the morning, sir,” said Faro, keeping her voice brusque and slightly annoyed, since she sensed that might hold more sway with Thrawn than a gentle tone. “If you go to bed with a thousand bruises, you won’t be able to move at all when you wake up. Come on.”

His eyebrow quirked, but he moved over to the bed, turning his back to Faro again and pulling the crewneck over his head. Faro settled down on the bed behind him and unzipped the medkit, looking through it for an expandable alcohol swab. She found it at the very bottom, crushed beneath a variety of torn bacta patch wrappers and half-empty alien painkillers.

Carefully, she opened the alcohol swab and unfolded it, taking a close look at Thrawn’s back. The bruises she saw were far worse than the cuts; they covered Thrawn’s back in wide swaths of indigo and violet, with the worst areas close to his hips and shoulders. He must have fallen, she speculated, or been thrown back by an energy blast and landed wrong. 

She laid the thin sheet of disinfectant over the back of his neck and let it rest there for a moment, giving him a chance to acclimate to the sting of alcohol on his abraded skin. Then, gently, she rubbed the swab over his skin, moving down his back in increments, removing every speck of dirt and dried blood. 

He wasn’t giving her a debrief, she noticed. But she couldn’t bring herself to complain.

The scent of bacta gel when she uncapped the tube was overwhelmingly reminiscent of sick bay. She squirted some into her hands and placed her palms flat against his shoulders, massaging it into the largest bruises. She could feel him breathing beneath her hands, deep and even and steady. 

But he didn’t exactly lean into her touch, even if he seemed relaxed with her. He didn’t flinch away, either, when she touched his bruises or ran her thumb over one of his old scars. When she sneaked a glance at his face, she saw that his eyes had drifted closed but his head was held high, less like he’d fallen asleep and more like he was thinking deeply.

Or trying to disconnect himself from the feeling of her hands on his skin as much as possible.

Feeling suddenly flushed, Faro pulled away. She didn’t want Thrawn to feel her change in temperature. She rooted through the medkit, just buying herself time and waiting for her blush to fade — and in the meantime she tried to figure out if she was blushing because the thought that he was disgusted or uncomfortable with her touch embarrassed her, or if it had more to do with how nice his skin felt against her own, and how intimate it was to tend his wounds.

Gradually, she felt her face cool and she returned to the bacta gel. Thrawn eyes fluttered open again when he heard the cap unlatch.

“You’re finished,” he said, his tone even.

“Not quite,” said Faro. “Time for your—” She slid off the bed and stepped around Thrawn, plopping down on the mattress in front of him and pulling her legs up so they wouldn’t get tangled with his. Thrawn jerked back, his eyes widening, and seemed almost to scramble away from her, pulling his own legs up until he was crouched on the mattress like a wild beast preparing for an attack. 

Faro blinked.

“—chest,” she finished.

Her eyes fell to Thrawn’s chest. He seemed frozen, not even breathing while she took in the network of scars across his collar bones, his pecs, his abs and sides. There were burn marks that might have come from blasters — slash marks that might have come from vibroblades. And just beneath his pecs were two long scars, the skin shiny and smooth rather than knotted. They were the only scars on his entire body that looked like that. Faro stared at them, her eyebrows furrowed and her lips pursed.

What could cause scars like that? Clearly, they weren’t inflicted on the battlefield. They looked almost surgical — and so even that they had to have been made deliberately. Was it some sort of Chiss ritual — a rite of passage, a military hazing ceremony of some sort?

Had he done that to _himself_? 

Quickly, Faro tore her eyes away, not wanting to dwell on it anymore. She could feel Thrawn studying her, his eyes narrowed, but his posture didn’t relax in the slightest until she started fiddling with the tube of bacta gel, shaking it to bring what was left closer to the cap.

By the time she had some of the viscous black fluid in her palms, Thrawn slowly — and reluctantly — sat back down within her reach.

“I can’t tell what you’re thinking,” he said, his voice level.

Faro raised her eyebrows at him. _That_ certainly wasn’t a statement she was used to hearing from Thrawn. Normally he read her mind as easily as he might blitz through a children’s picture book. 

“I was thinking about whether I wanted to start with the bruises on your collar bones or the cuts on your abdomen, sir,” Faro told him.

He absorbed this, his expression impossible to interpret. Silently, he gestured to the cuts on his abs and scooted closer to her so she could reach. He leaned back on his palms, holding still but flinching slightly as she tended to the wounds. 

Not a flinch, exactly, Faro noted, watching his abs twitch beneath her hands. More like he was ticklish.

She was definitely filing _that_ information away for later.

“For the record,” she said neutrally as she worked, “I can’t tell what you’re thinking, either.”

Predictably, he opted not to enlighten her. Instead, he countered with another question of his own.

“You have seen scars like this before?” he asked, indicating the smooth silver lines beneath his pecs. Faro glanced at them again, quickly, and couldn’t help but frown.

“No, sir,” she said. “I assumed it was a Chiss thing.”

He blinked at her, lips parted, and then looked away.

He didn’t speak at all after that, staying silent while Faro tended to every little cut and bruise. All he did was avoid her eyes by staring intently at the wall.

* * *

There was no shortage of backwater worlds in need of help out in the Outer Rim, Faro reflected. If all the Chimaera had to do was help them, she supposed she wouldn’t mind. She and the rest of the officers could stay aboard their ship, comfortably engaging in rescue or space battle or whatever was needed, and when the mission was done, they could go about their merry way.

Unfortunately, Thrawn’s mission was to map the Unknown Regions, not to simply save everyone who sent him a distress signal. What this typically meant was that after responding to said distress signal, Thrawn politely asked the local leadership if he might come down for tea.

Which was something neither of them enjoyed, Faro suspected, but if they wanted to get a feel for the local cultures and disputes, it was the fastest way to get things done.

She made her way back from the primitive fresher and roamed the halls of the so-called palace, searching for the tiny ‘banquet room’ where alien royalty was currently talking Thrawn’s ear off about trade routes. The room was packed, and the halls weren’t much better — filled with the monarch’s brothers and sisters, distant cousins, aunts, uncles, and a few people who Faro was pretty sure weren’t even the same species but claimed to be family nonetheless.

With a sigh, she sat down at Thrawn’s side and tried to figure out how close the party was to being over. He glanced sideways at her in a brief, blessed lull of conversation.

Quietly, so the other partygoers couldn’t hear him, Thrawn asked, “How did you find the fresher?”

Faro frowned, trying to figure out if this was a trick question. “There are signs, sir,” she said.

There was a pause as Thrawn visibly recalibrated. “I meant your assessment of it,” he said. “Your opinion.”

“Oh.” Still, kind of a strange question. Faro looked down the table, confirming that the monarch was deep in conversation and couldn’t hear her. “Rather primitive, sir. It’s a wood floor with holes cut at the bottom of each stall. And no plumbing. I’m not sure what the men’s room looks like.”

Thrawn digested this, his face unreadable. Across the table, a local alien leaned forward and said, perhaps too loudly to be polite, “The men’s room is the same, Grand Admiral, but with only one stall.”

“Hm,” said Thrawn, his voice toneless. He turned back to his food with disinterest, telegraphing to the alien quite clearly that the conversation was done. Only when the alien turned away did Thrawn cut his eyes back to Faro. “There’s no unisex fresher, I suppose? A private one?”

“No, sir,” said Faro, suppressing a grimace of sympathy. “If you need to, we can always return to the shuttle early.”

“No need,” he said. He glanced out the window, to the woods surrounding the palace. “I suppose I can always slip away and piss outside.”

Faro nearly choked on her food. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Thrawn swear before, even something as mild as ‘piss.’ She could feel him studying her in something like concern as she pounded on her chest.

Voice still a bit raspy, Faro managed to ask, “If you just need to piss, why can’t you use the men’s room?”

His lips tightened in a look of unmistakable disapproval, but he didn’t respond. He turned away from Faro, leaving her to study his posture for any signs of discomfort. There were none, so she supposed she didn’t have to stage a distraction or come up with excuses to leave. 

She shook her head and refilled her glass of local fruit juice, which may or may not have had a bite of rum — the aliens here didn’t distinguish between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, so their answers to her questions had been unclear. As she sipped, she mentally shook her head.

She would have never guessed Thrawn was so shy.

* * *

Before she knew it, there was the incident at Batuu. Never a moment of peace on the Chimaera, she supposed.

Faro was standing in the hangar bay when Darth Vader exited the Admiral’s shuttle, his respirator making him sound ominously calm as he walked past her. There was stone and dust all over his armor, she noticed, but she barely paid any attention to it — already, she was turning her gaze toward the shuttle, wondering why Thrawn hadn’t emerged yet. 

Surely, she told herself, if something had happened planet-side he would have commed to let her know.

Unless he was incapacitated. Then it would be up to Vader to alert the _Chimaera_ — and would he bother? Would he even consider it worth his notice that Thrawn was injured?

She hemmed and hawed outside the shuttle for a moment and then, figuring it was best not to dally if Thrawn was indeed bleeding out on the durasteel inside, she approached the door and entered. There was no point in knocking, she knew; the door was so thick that the only sound capable of penetrating it was a series of blaster bolts. Instead, she buzzed it open and stepped inside.

And froze there, her mouth open, as she caught Thrawn with his pants down. He froze, too, in the middle of undressing, and stared at her with wide, glowing eyes, forgetting to cover himself. There was a beat of silence where absolutely everything was on display, and then — long before Faro herself recovered her senses — Thrawn turned around and continued undressing as if nothing had happened. He didn’t try to pull his trousers back up, Faro noticed, and after a moment she saw why — his entire uniform, like Vader’s armor, was coated in stone. 

“Ah…” said Faro belatedly. She realized she was still staring at Thrawn’s ass as he stepped out of his trousers and reached for the fresh pair hanging in the locker nearby. He had to walk sideways to avoid flashing her. 

“Something vital I need to know, Commodore?” asked Thrawn, his voice tight as he got dressed. 

“Just … making sure you’re alright, sir,” said Faro with a wince. Thrawn pulled the trousers up and worked the sealing strip with his back turned to her, his shoulders a tense line. He reached for a clean undershirt the same way he’d reached for the trousers, careful not to turn around even slightly. 

“I’m uninjured,” he said, pulling the undershirt over his head. His shoulder hitched slightly as he spoke, a reflexive twitch that he apparently couldn’t suppress. Faro couldn’t see any blood, so she guessed it was probably just a strained or sore muscle. There were fresh bruises dotting his back, too, some larger than others — but, like Thrawn, Faro didn’t really consider those to be injuries. She decided to let the comment slide. 

“Someone dip you in a synstone mixer, sir?” she asked. 

He pulled his tunic on and only turned to face her when he was halfway through buttoning it up. “More or less,” he said. His voice was light and unbothered now, but his face was hard. “What did you see?” he asked.

Faro frowned, not understanding the question. Thrawn’s eyes met hers, boring into her with the full weight of intimidation behind the stare.

“I … saw … your uniform, all covered in stone,” she said slowly, unsure what Thrawn was getting at. She made a weak gesture toward the discarded uniform items on the floor. “I won’t tell anyone, sir, if secrecy is a concern.” 

She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t a little confused by it; he’d never explicitly asked her to keep _anything_ secret before, and he’d definitely done plenty of things as Grand Admiral that he probably didn’t want the Emperor or certain Moffs or even Governor Pryce finding out about. It seemed odd that this, of all things, should be where he drew the line.

“No subtleties, please,” said Thrawn, confusing her even further. His voice was crisp and dry. “I don’t want to speak in code about this, Commodore. I need to be absolutely sure that we understand each other.”

“ _Code_ , sir?” Faro said. She gestured to the discarded uniform again. “I’m not being _subtle_ here, sir, and I’m certainly not speaking in code. Whatever that substance is, it sure looks like stone to me.”

“It is stone,” said Thrawn a touch impatiently. “But that’s not what I’m asking about and you know it.”

She narrowed her eyes at that, studying his face for clues. Thrawn stared back at her, a dangerous look on his face — something that straddled the border between defensiveness and heart-stopping contempt. But the contempt, she realized, wasn’t entirely genuine; it was an expression he wore like a mask to deflect from whatever he really felt. 

Her eyes flickered down his body. Trying not to blush, she remembered what she’d seen when she first walked in. Surely he wasn’t so self-conscious that he was making a big deal about _that_.

“You mean…” she hesitated. “You mean, you want to know if I got a clear look at…?”

Thrawn looked very much like he’d rather not know at all, but he gave a sharp nod in response. 

“I did, sir,” Faro admitted.

For a moment, his face was utterly blank. The shuttle was silent, neither of them speaking.

“And?” he prompted, one eyebrow inching higher.

 _And?_ What else could he possibly expect her to say? Did he want an apology, or was this some sort of abominable attempt at flirting? Did he want to know if she liked what she saw?

“And it’s…” Faro hesitated again, deciding to tackle this head-on, stating nothing but facts until she knew what Thrawn was getting at. It seemed like the safest play to her. “It’s, ah, a bit different from what I’m used to, sir.”

His face darkened, but he didn’t reply. It seemed to Faro like he was waiting for her to go on.

“The males of your species,” she said delicately, clasping her hands behind her back so he wouldn’t see her fidgeting, “resemble the females of my species pretty closely, that’s all. It was a bit of a surprise.”

Thrawn’s arms twitched a little at that, giving Faro the impression that he wanted to cross them protectively over his chest, but was forcing himself to stay still. He was avoiding her eyes now, preferring to glower into the empty shuttle instead. Faro watched him for a moment, unable to interpret the mixture of expressions on his face.

“Ah, if it makes you feel better, sir,” she said, “it’s pretty common for soldiers to see each other naked here. Most everyone in the Imperial Navy has seen their coworkers naked at some point or other.”

“That does not make me feel better,” said Thrawn in monotone. 

“Well—”

“This is not a locker room,” Thrawn continued, his voice unnaturally neutral. “And I did not undress with forewarning that someone would watch me. Furthermore, we are different species, and I am your commanding officer, not your coworker. It is a different situation entirely.”

Faro swallowed, desperately wishing that Thrawn had just laughed the whole situation off instead of addressing it like this. “It’s really not that remarkable, sir,” she said, trying to sound soothing without sounding patronizing as well. “I’ve seen alien genitals before, you know. It’s not like I’m going to run out of here and report to psych for a trauma debrief.”

He met her eyes at that, frowning a little. “Of course not.” There was a long pause. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath, like he was preparing to say something important, but then he just shook his head. “Of course not,” he said again, almost apologetically this time. “I shouldn’t have detained you, Commodore. You’re free to go.”

He seemed determined not to walk out with her, though Faro couldn’t imagine he had any pressing tasks to see to inside the shuttle. Most likely, she thought, he just couldn’t bear the awkwardness of traveling all the way to the bridge with her after she’d seen him nude. She nodded, muttered a goodbye, and left, privately a little grateful for his decision to let her walk away alone.

Out in the corridor, a wave of heat rushed to her face. She rubbed her cheeks, trying to rub the blush out of them. She’d be lying if she said she’d never wondered how Chiss genitals compared to the human sort, especially in the case of one Chiss in particular — but somehow, it had never occurred to her that Thrawn would look, for all intents and purposes, identical to her. The only difference, really, had been that he was hairless, which only meant that she’d gotten an unobstructed view of the soft-looking blue folds between his legs. 

She shook her head as if she could banish the thoughts that way and set off for the bridge.

* * *

“She’s tall,” Faro murmured.

Thrawn took his eyes off the departing Chiss admiral and turned to look at Faro instead. The somewhat dazed expression that had been on his face a moment before was now gone, replaced with something sharp.

“She’s average for a Chiss,” he said.

“Two meters is average?” asked Faro, eyeing Thrawn. “Does that mean you’re short for a man?”

Thrawn glanced sideways at her, a peculiar expression on his face. “No,” he said. “Chiss men and women are roughly the same height, on average.”

He turned away from her after a moment, watching the woman — Ar’alani — depart, the Chiss girls walking ahead of her in a bustling little group. Faro studied him, noting the distant cast of his eyes. 

She’d grown too accustomed to the look of sadness on his face during this mission. It was becoming almost normal to glance at him and see a hint of loneliness or homesickness before he banished it. And it had become normal, too, to hear him cut himself off mid-sentence — always thinking he couldn’t reveal too much about himself — or listen to him avoid questions about his past.

Faro watched the Chiss shuttle drop from Thrawn’s private docking bay. When they were alone again, she turned to him, waiting for orders.

But Thrawn only stared at the docks where the shuttle had been a moment before, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes unseeing.

“Sir?” Faro prodded him. When he didn’t answer, she stepped closer to him, watching his eyes flicker. She lowered her voice. “Thrawn? Are you okay?”

He stirred at that, but his expression didn’t change. “Quite,” he said formally. 

“You’re sure?”

He looked down at her sharply, a line appearing between his eyebrows. He didn’t answer right away; he studied her face, looking for something Faro couldn’t guess at. 

She watched his eyes dart down to her lips — just passing over them the same way he examined every other part of her face, not lingering unduly. But it was enough to make Faro’s heart jump in her chest. She felt like her eyes had become glued to him, and to the hints of sadness he hadn’t quite erased from his face.

He couldn’t go back, she knew. He could only make himself comfortable here.

Touching his hand, she leaned forward, standing on her tiptoes to reach his lips.

Perhaps, she thought, she could help him with that. 

* * *

It only took her about two seconds of seeing Vanto and Vah’nya together to realize that they were a thing. The easy intimacy between them was as easy to spot as the emotional tension between Thrawn and Ar’alani, who always seemed about one step away from slapping him in the face. 

There was a story between those two, Faro thought, and it was probably one she didn’t want to know.

Vanto and Vah’nya, on the other hand….

“Yes,” he admitted when she cornered him that afternoon. “But don’t tell anyone, okay? Human-Chiss relationships are kind of…”

He twirled a hand vaguely.

“Taboo?” Faro filled in for him.

“Nonexistent,” he said with a grimace. Faro nodded sympathetically.

“Worse than the Empire, then?” she asked.

He heaved a deep sigh. “Yes and no. It’s … it’s better in a lot of ways, but … you know…” 

He finished with a shrug, so Faro didn’t push him. 

“You look like a good match,” she told him, keeping her voice low. “And she’s cute, too, so that’s always a plus.”

He gave her a smile, weak but genuine. “She is, isn’t she?”

“Well, don’t be _gross_ about it,” Faro said, “but yeah.”

They were silent for a moment, Vanto’s eyes shining and far away as he thought of his new Chiss girlfriend. Faro’s thoughts were running along a similar vein.

“I, uh, kind of kissed the Grand Admiral,” she said.

Vanto looked at her, still smiling, and then processed what she’d said and nearly dislocated his jaw. “You _what_?” Then, when Faro only shrugged, he closed his mouth, made a conspicuous attempt to compose himself, and said, “Did he kiss you back?”

Faro tried not to look too pleased about it. She buried her face in her mug of caf so Vanto couldn’t see her expression.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said wryly. Luckily, he didn’t ask anymore questions; Faro didn’t know how to obfuscate the fact that in the months since Batuu, she and Thrawn had done nothing _more_ than kiss. And even those moments had been quick, chaste — and followed by a frosty, almost pained distance between them that Thrawn seemed to pull down like a curtain as soon as Faro’s lips touched him.

“You _do_ seem like his type, now that I think about it,” Vanto continued. “Military, highly competent. You know, he used to date—”

“Don’t want to know,” said Faro at once, holding up a hand to stop him. Vanto nodded with a smile, wrapping his hands around his own mug of caf. After a moment, he eyed Faro speculatively and said,

“So have you two … uh…”

“Have you and Vah’nya?” Faro shot back immediately. 

She’d only meant it as a rhetorical question, a way to deflect from the fact that she and Thrawn most certainly had _not_ , but Vanto blushed deeply at the question and adjusted his collar.

“We, uh, we have, yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “She’s … uh, she’s very flexible.”

“Don’t want to know,” said Faro again. But then, thinking about it a little harder, she decided she did. She looked toward the doorway, checking to make sure they were still alone, and then leaned closer to Vanto.

“I saw Thrawn undressing once,” she whispered. “Got a pretty good look at everything…” She gestured vaguely toward her lap. “...down there. What’s that like in bed? Is it awkward at all? I mean, are they actually compatible with humans, or…?”

Vanto only stared at her, a faint line between his eyebrows. After Faro trailed off, there was a silence just long enough to make her regret speaking, and then Vanto shook his head slightly and said,

“It’s … no, it’s not awkward. Chiss women are just like human women, only … you know … blue.”

Faro only stared at him, not quite processing this. “Oh?” she said eventually. Then, with a studiously casual tone, she picked up her mug of caf and said, “And the men?”

“Well, I’ve only seen them in the locker room,” Vanto said, that line of confusion still between his eyebrows. “But they looked just like human men to me.”

“Oh,” said Faro again. She thought about this a second and then took a deep gulp of caf, burning her tongue horribly and muscling through it. Vanto watched her the whole time.

“Is … Thrawn …” he started.

“No, he’s normal,” said Faro quickly.

“...not — oh,” said Vanto. “Okay.” He blinked a few times, then shook his head. “It’s just, you sort of implied—”

“No,” said Faro again, firmly. “He’s normal. It’s just that I was led to believe the women were different, that’s all.”

She sounded pretty convincing, she thought, but Vanto still looked a little doubtful. Faro checked her comlink, now thoroughly done with this conversation.

“Well, look at that,” she said, looking at nothing. “I better go.”

“Right,” said Vanto flatly. It was clear that he knew she was just avoiding him, but he didn’t call her on it or try to stop her. “Well, it was nice seeing you again,” he said as she stood. “Good luck to you and Thrawn.”

“...Right,” said Faro. 

* * *

She entered Thrawn’s quarters without knocking, waving the death troopers away from the door. Thrawn barely glanced up at her; he’d been nearly silent since the Steadfast left, and that line between his eyebrows was back — the one that indicated he was thinking too hard about something, or struggling to sort something out in his head.

He wouldn’t tell her, she realized, staring at him now. And she couldn’t find the words she needed to ask. As long as he lived — as long as he was in the military — as long as he held command somewhere, he would never open up to anyone. He couldn’t tell her about his past without potentially endangering his people; he couldn’t tell her about himself — his scars, the supplements, the small pieces of evidence she’d noticed over the years — without endangering his own career.

And maybe he shouldn’t, Faro reflected. Maybe no commander should. 

Maybe she shouldn’t have kissed him, either.

He looked up at her, one hand hovering over his datapad. “Commodore Faro,” he said, as if it were normal for her to barge into his quarters unannounced. When she didn’t respond to the greeting, he looked her up and down and frowned. “You have something to say?” he prompted her.

She gripped her datapad before her and took a deep breath. She made a quick decision.

“No, sir,” she said. “I have the reports from the bridge. That’s all.”


End file.
